


Feeling In The Dark

by selkieskin



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Character Study, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, Loneliness, M/M, Non-Sexual Touching, POV Second Person, Pining, Touch-Starved, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vulcan, Vulcan Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selkieskin/pseuds/selkieskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nights are always the worst time to think of someone you want with you. Spock deals with it alone, as he always has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feeling In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from my account at KSArchive, under the name Bluebell.

Night was always when the feelings struck hardest.

During the daytime you were kept busy by this and that task, routine procedures and endless other tasks to do. He was constantly talking to you, laughing with you, forcing you to breathe deeply and maintain your Vulcan calm. Keep your hands to yourself.

But some part was cataloguing these slight breaches of conduct, and turning them into something amplified, unrealistic. The memories of him, the words, the looks, the touches consume you at night. Night is a time when all distractions are shut behind the door for the next few hours and it’s just you, alone. A new emptiness, save the memories and sensations of him. Laughing white grin behind soft pink lips. The look he gets in his eyes when speaking to a crewmember. The easy affection he exudes as he strolls around the ship, aware that he is in command of all of this. You almost envy him for it, love the way he interacts so effortlessly with other people yet some part of you hating that he can do that and you are unable to. Seeing him with those he seduces is the worst. He is so close to them, touching them as he'd never want to touch you and some immature, selfish part of you thinks _why can’t he hold me like that?_ before you quash it and remind him of a task he needs to accomplish. Always keep busy.

You can recall exactly his smell, but can’t quite imagine how it would feel to bury your nose in him and take in a heady lungful of his air. Even trying to think of it intensified by some lesser distance makes you almost lose your grasp of logic. And imagining that affectionate look so close to you, really looking into your eyes, his breath and yours mixing…

It has been so long since anyone really touched you. The constraints of the service… no, it is not even the service. The only ones who ever gave you contact were animals and your mother, and now she is far out of reach and the keeping of animals for non-research purposes are against the regulations. You cannot let yourself go like these humans can, however much you crave to. You are here partially to prove to yourself and to the world that being in the company of humans so constantly does not make you any less Vulcan.

Sometimes you fear it might.

Those little glimpses you get – a hand on your shoulder, a brush against your side – they make you thrill with need, make you dream about finally being able to lean back into his arms and when you wake and the room is empty, you lie there shaking and starving for what you may never have. Sometimes you swear he is there at your back but then your reason takes you again and you find yourself leaning back into nothing but air and cloth. There is nothing there. There is never anything there.

Tonight is no exception. It has been far too long since meditation or sleep have taken you and your reflex times are beginning to be affected, much to your discomfort. The only thing that you can think of now is to simulate the touch of another in the only way that you know.

You finish your vain attempt at meditation and stand up. Fighting the urge for up to two minutes is nothing new, just part of the ritual. It used to work more often than it currently does. Now it just brings with it a sad kind of inevitability. You know that without this, your sleep will be fitful, restless, will achieve little. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, you begin by reaching down and catching the opening of your meditation robe in your hands, sliding it over your shoulders and off. You do this with the rest of your clothing and exert your control over yourself to calmly and neatly fold them. You’re not losing yourself enough to abandon all propriety just yet.

This is the point where you should don your sleeping robes. You do not. Instead you reach a hand down, blinking once with shame at your weakness to touch, trailing it through your chest-hair in feather-touches until it rests against your stomach.

You do not know why this still makes you shudder. It is not as if you had not expected it, it is not as if this is someone else touching you, but it fulfils the same purpose. Your other arm reaches round to grasp your opposite shoulder and you lean your head into it.

You unwrap yourself temporarily to lay down on the bed. Covers are unnecessary, and you lie on top of them. You curl up and squeeze yourself with your arms, noting also how your legs slide together. Silky skin against silky skin. Full body contact.

You begin at the feet. Vulcan feet retain some of the sensitivity of the hands, and your legs press against your bare chest as you dip a finger into each of the gaps between the toes in turn. They twitch as you run your fingers over the soles, and a spasm catches one as a nail scratches down the centre. But you do not cry out. Whatever may happen to your breathing, this is always done in deadly silence.

Next the backs of your legs. You turn onto your side. For this you do use your nails, knowing that this will leave behind a trail of little white scratches that will be gone by morning. You do this several times, over and over, concentrating your mind on the sensation. Any sensation. You switch to your full palm when you reach the backs of your knees, and keep trailing up, up, until you are able to cup your own buttocks. After giving them a faint squeeze, you trail one hand round to cup your genitals. The skin just above them flinches again and again in response to the touch, but they are otherwise unmoved.

Your genitals themselves are soft and useless. There is some degree of comfort from feeling them there, anyway. You are aware of the human custom of masturbation, but it holds no answers for you. You have not yet experienced Pon Farr, the time of mating, and doubt you ever will, spared by virtue of the same human blood that is causing you this torment. This lack of control. It has been so long that you assume your wife has moved on. It is logical. Hybrids are sterile, and it is pointless for someone like you to take a mate. The only one you can imagine being joined to now is him, anyway. That, too, is illogical, as it is impossible. So you remain alone. You run your thumb once down the perineum, squeeze the shaft again, and then move on.

The lower half done, you begin again at the top, rolling onto your back and stretching yourself out methodically, forcing your muscles to relax through slow breathing and conscious will. Your fingers run through your hair, tugging it lightly, lingering at sensitive spots like the backs of the ears. Once you did this too desperately and some came out in your fist. Fortunately, the amount was negligible, but it alerted you anew to the dangers of going too far with this, of abandoning yourself completely. It should not be done.

Your hands come down the front of your head, sweeping down to your neck before you set to work tracing all your features. The arched eyebrows, the closed eyelids, the nose. And the lips. You linger on this place. They always seem to give you the most connection with him. As if he were the one there, kissing your lips with his hands. _Jim…_ you mouth, feeling the breath stimulate your fingers, warming them.

It is intense tonight. You are too weary for the usual careful completion so you wrap yourself up in your arms, a sudden death-grip, convulsed around yourself, face screwed up tight, not breathing.

Such a tight hold would break the weak ribs of a human but you like to imagine that if he held you his muscles could produce the strength you need to hold yourself together. Your right hand comes up and trails down your face, cradling the meld points for a moment and you can’t quite imagine it is him but the illusion is almost there for you, you’re just so tired of reality. You kiss your palm and suddenly you’re licking, lapping up your fingers in a way that is so illogical and undignified, but somehow you’re too far gone to care. It is a poor substitute, but somehow, you need this.

The other hand trails kisses up and down your spine.

Eventually, you drift off to sleep.


End file.
